


What Goes Around (A Debt Remix)

by JackOfNone



Category: Final Fantasy VI
Genre: Battle, Gen, Gore, Remix, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-17
Updated: 2011-03-17
Packaged: 2017-10-17 01:53:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/171716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JackOfNone/pseuds/JackOfNone
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even gods must reap what they sow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What Goes Around (A Debt Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Lassarina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lassarina/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Debt](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17246) by [Lassarina](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lassarina/pseuds/Lassarina). 



> For some reason, this idea seized me by the throat and would. not. let go. This is my first time writing Kefka, so I hope it comes across well.

He’d always known that this battle would happen someday.

Kefka could remember the first time he’d ever seen Terra. She’d been a small girl at the time — six or seven years old maybe, not that he cared — and had been sitting on the edge of a balcony, playing with a little model airship.

“See that, Palazzo?” Gestahl had said, gesturing towards the girl with the pale green hair. “That is how we’re going to rule the world. There’s magic in her blood, boy — true magic, not Cid’s lab-grown substitutes. She is our real secret weapon. When she’s old enough, no one will be able to stand against us.”

Kefka remembered it, because it was the first time he had ever known real jealousy. He had always known, deep in his heart, that he was the most powerful person in the world — or could be, if there was nothing holding him back, no duty or desire to distract him from his greatest goal. But the girl with the green hair…she had something that he did not, and there was no way to take it from her. He could kill the girl, of course, but he saw no method of getting away with it cleanly, and as much as he hated to admit it, Gestahl was right — they needed her, and her inborn magic.

It had pleased him greatly to finally put the Slave Crown on her head, stripping away the last vestiges of her will. Every time she had turned to him, awaiting orders with her eyes blank and staring, he thought there must be no better sight in the world than this — the one creature on earth who could best him reduced to this, subordinate to his will and his alone to employ.

When he looked into her eyes now, here at the end of the world, it was almost as wonderful. Such hatred! She’d come in full strength, her entire body alight with her power, all fear and hesitation burned away by rage. She opened her mouth and shouted something he couldn’t quite hear over the din as her comrades surged forward. It would be quite an impressive sight if they weren’t standing on the top of his tower, fashioned from the ruins of an entire continent, overlooking a world that Kefka alone had remade in his own image. What was the blood of Espers, compared to this?

He spread his wings and laughed when his tower of souls tore into Terra’s flesh in its death throes, splattering one of its many maws with luminescent blood. She fell face-first onto the creature’s massive corpse, dwarfing the greatest citadel of the old Empire even in its death. Her companions were on her instantly, the king of Figaro fumbling for a potion, the traitor raising her hands for a spell. A waste of time, Kefka thought. There were four of them, though the assassin had hidden himself for the moment, and though they were wounded and dirty he could hear their shouts of triumph when the monster shuddered and died, as if adding another body to Kefka’s charnel house of gods was something to be proud of.

He took that moment to reach forward and rend open the sky, manifesting in his full glory.

The look on the half-breed’s face as she rose to her feet wasn’t nearly as frightened as he would have liked. No matter…it would only make it that much more exciting when she finally realized the futility of her determination.

He shook his wings, cackled wildly, and dove like a hawk. This was going to be the best night of his life. Better than the night he gutted General Leo, better than the morning he made the sun fail to rise for the first time, better than the night when he heard the mortals below his tower offering praise and worship as though it might turn aside his wrath.

He cascaded heedlessly though the scorching blast of the traitor’s magic. Loose feathers evaporated instantly in the white-hot fire, and he was dimly aware that the spell had hit home, but pain was a distant memory — something he had once been afraid of as a mortal being. As a god, he could not even remember why he had feared it. The air around him screamed with his passing, and the traitor and the young king — who had stepped up to defend Terra while she rose to her feet, noble and idiotic to the last — fell back, coughing blood.

Much to Kefka’s chagrin, the king was still standing. He was choking with the smell of burning flesh, but he’d wiped the blood from his face and had hefted his machine again. Kefka seized the moment and swooped forward, bearing down on him. Cutting wide swathes of destruction across the world with the Light of Judgement was all very well and good, but it had been over a year since Kefka had had the experience of killing someone with his bare hands — at least, someone who was capable of fighting back. The man rushed to meet him, and a shrill whine split the air as the king’s drill met Kefka’s wing, boring straight through bone. Kefka seized the king by his throat and threw him like a ragdoll, smiling with satisfaction when the king landed on his arm with a sickening crack, his drill tumbling uselessly from his hand.

He shook his wings in a rain of golden feathers, blood, and splintered bone from where the drill had been wrenched from his body.

Blood. They’d drawn blood on him.

His vengeance was swift. The entire tower quaked as the light of Kefka’s anger burst from it, burning the clouds into vapor. His opponents scattered. The assassin leapt from hiding at the edge of Kefka’s field of vision, and he heard the impact of the assassin’s shuriken more than felt them. The assassin had fine aim, and Kefka’s right wing was all but shredded — no matter. If they thought they could bring down a god to earth by breaking his wings, they were sorely mistaken.

The light cleared, and she was there. The half-breed Terra, still burning. She raised her sword, and Kefka braced himself for her feeble attempts at magic.

The spell never came. Instead, she lunged forward, swinging her sword in a wide arc. Kefka didn’t even bother to block her stroke, and it carved a bright red line down the front of his chest. The action brought her close enough that he could see her face clearly, smoldering with hatred.

Blood ran down her sword, onto her hand…and then, her lips twisted into a small smile of satisfaction.

Kefka knew that feeling well — that delight in the simple act of causing pain. He had never before seen it directed at him. He felt suddenly conscious of the gore on Terra’s sword, and the growing sting in the wound on his chest.

Someone behind Terra ignited the air again with magic, and from behind him he heard the whirr and scream of a drill meeting resistance and the hiss of a metal throwing star slashing through the air. All of that seemed distant now, unimportant compared to the girl in front of him who had found the way to make a god feel pain.

When she lunged forward and buried her sword in his chest, he couldn’t help but laugh, even though the agony was practically unbearable. All his life, he’d wanted so badly to destroy her, but…this bitter irony might be even better. Even if Terra cut him down, the world would never be free of him — and neither would she. She’d live, and remember this moment when all she wanted was pain and suffering and slaughter. In the end, she'd been just like him, and he'd made her that way. He'd been his own undoing, and in destroying himself, he'd live forever.

“I win,” Kefka hissed, as Terra raised her sword again, but he doubted she even heard him in her frenzy.

Terra's sword swung downwards again, and he kept on laughing.


End file.
